My Hackney Holiday
Reaching out for knowledge is a funny thing.
It would be good if by doing so the image of yourself stayed the same.
But it doesn’t.
It shifts and grows and shrinks, as if you are sitting in a train
looking out at yourself standing on a platform.
And the train comes in and out of the station.
Your form, like your ego shifts.
Often it is so small it’s
like a pin.
A stripe of figure with a head.
Even from a distance we can recognise this as human.
A little closer the stance is particular.
Closer and you see yourself again
but with knowledge you are altered.
Like gathering candy floss, images come with you.
Jewels float from Victoria and Albert’s stained glass
(which you hated at the time)
and from a tapestry with mad eyes.
I could hardly see myself when I arrived,
The tiredness from a years working on adrenalin,
a new space to live, new studio, 2 months of nothing mapped.
But I walked on roots.
The planes outside our window grow on common land.
Their foundations must reach to the edges of the park
so at turf level, below the branches,
we are enveloped in wood.
Days spent in low sun and the patterns of branches,
the unfamiliar becomes the regular
and you find the right route,
the super highway.
And like Barcelona it makes you break into song while riding your bike.
Its January, its raining and cold
but from the cycle path the outlook over the river is awesome.
One week in the national gallery
is enough to alter the currency.
The anxiety of a workaholic
switches to self investment, to enquiry.
I went medieval.
I went baroque, I even found Jesus.
And Mary.
And Venice.
I could go on.
The great masters like route planners,
they handed a baton,
they said yes.
After a couple of beers your ambition swelled
to be as great as Amadeus
and ‘so lofty you shat marble’.
Yes, you could be as good as Raphael.
Given the time, the space.
The equation is a third.
I am only working to a third of my ability.
(ok so add two thirds I admit Raphael and Mozart may still be a reach)
But as you stared close up at your mad and excited face
the train pulls away.
Back in class, learning.
I always said drawing was humbling but then add a tutor’s
knowledge, even just their power to retain names makes you small.
Eating out, drinking, growing physically larger makes you small.
A weakness is exposed, a chink,
and you go for self destruct.
The train moves out and even the pin starts to haze.
You need help to get back into the station.
You reach out by email, ‘I need a guide to help me see myself’.
I check my website to make sure I don’t look too shoddy
and realise that I am back on the platform.
I am suddenly back in my body.
The equation is still two thirds
but I have a strong third here.
I am actually a painter after all.
p.s.
Graham says ‘it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t give yourself a hard time about it’
Yes, correct Graham.
But Graham,
it does matter.
It does matter what you do.
2/3 rds Graham,
that’s how much it matters.